4 ms·

I guess open misogyny is ok on HN now? What the fuck is this?

by jolux 8y ago

dang 8y ago
The fact that somebody posted something does not make it "ok" on HN. Moderation takes time to kick in. So does flagging.
- jolux 8y ago
  Mostly it just appalls me that I habitually share space online with people who believe those things about women, being a woman myself. There are social contours of a space which dictate norms of behavior beyond explicit enforcement of rules, and I suppose I just assumed they were different here.
  - dang 8y ago
    That makes sense. HN is larger than people usually assume—it gets about 5M monthly readers. In such a big population there are subsets who take any point of view, and on divisive topics the ones who tend to comment a lot online tend to... skew to the tails, shall we say. The vast majority just don't say anything. Since there is almost nothing to stop people from posting whatever they want, we get a wild set of initial conditions. You should see some of the content we have to deal with before you run across it (or rather, I hope you don't). There are good-citizen users who help us with this a lot. It takes moderation to react to that and settle into some community norm. HN does have relatively cohesive community norms, but with so large and open and online a community, such norms can never be more than a statistical cloud, with large outlier regions. This is why I tend to react when people draw conclusions about the community from particular posts that appear—it leads to misleading conclusions. A better thing to draw conclusions from would be the flagging behavior, but this is harder to observe and takes time to show up. Edit: There's another factor which is poorly understood, and which I think might have been at play in the comment you were reacting to above: HN is a highly international community. Norms on divisive issues vary greatly across countries. Many of us tend to assume that HN is composed of people mostly like ourselves (in terms of background), but that's far from true. After observing the data closely for many years, I'm convinced that many international differences come across as outrageous domestic behavior when we misinterpret who's speaking. Not that a statement would be more acceptable, necessarily, if we knew—but it would be less provocative, because people seem willing to adjust for this when encountering opposing views.
    - jolux 8y ago
      I appreciate that flagging occurs, and I do applaud that in recent years the space has started to seem markedly less toxic. I think for me it's partially that it's gotten so much better of late that the bad posts stick out more. I also have noted that the comments are often at odds with what gets voted to the front page, suggesting far more people vote for things than bother to comment.
  - b0rsuk 8y ago
    The easiest fix would be not allowing people from outside US to post, or alternatively writing the current American social rules into the HN guidelines to avoid such unpleasant surprises. It is implicit that American social rules are to be followed, but it doesn't state it anywhere in the guidelines. From the outside, some US social rules and political correctness are very transparent and laughable: * in movies, there must be a black man in position of power, and you need to iterate over human "races" and put one of each into the cast. I find the term "Afro-American" misleading because for example a person from Haiti is neither but does have a very dark skin. * double moral standards homicide is lauded when performed by colored people on whites. No one dares to say Django Unchained is a so-so movie. The movie was a huge success in US, but is largely forgotten everywhere else. * it is not OK to laugh at certain groups of people, like disabled or religious types. Contrast this with Monty Python's approach, who made the point to laugh at everyone, including atheists. That's what I call healthy. If a society has a group of extremely sensitive people who can't take criticism, I call it out of balance. It means people have other sorts of problems, because mentally stable people can take a joke at their expense. * Domestic abuse against women is abhorrent, but against men there's a movie genre called "screwball comedy". Kick a man in his balls and it's FUNNY! Expose a man sitting on a toilet and it's FUNNY! I'm talking about movies. * It's okay to depict flying pieces of brain, blood and intestines but a nipple gets a movie banned. Anything sexual is the work of Satan. * Gun control laws. It's like Americans worship a god of Death. Anyone is free to go on a killing spree I guess? Personally I think it's more rude than implying there are some differences between men and women. YMMV.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]

I guess open misogyny is ok on HN now? What the fuck is this?

by jolux 8y ago

I guess open misogyny is ok on HN now? What the fuck is this?

dang 8y ago

The fact that somebody posted something does not make it "ok" on HN. Moderation takes time to kick in. So does flagging.

jolux 8y ago
Mostly it just appalls me that I habitually share space online with people who believe those things about women, being a woman myself. There are social contours of a space which dictate norms of behavior beyond explicit enforcement of rules, and I suppose I just assumed they were different here.
- dang 8y ago
  That makes sense. HN is larger than people usually assume—it gets about 5M monthly readers. In such a big population there are subsets who take any point of view, and on divisive topics the ones who tend to comment a lot online tend to... skew to the tails, shall we say. The vast majority just don't say anything. Since there is almost nothing to stop people from posting whatever they want, we get a wild set of initial conditions. You should see some of the content we have to deal with before you run across it (or rather, I hope you don't). There are good-citizen users who help us with this a lot. It takes moderation to react to that and settle into some community norm. HN does have relatively cohesive community norms, but with so large and open and online a community, such norms can never be more than a statistical cloud, with large outlier regions. This is why I tend to react when people draw conclusions about the community from particular posts that appear—it leads to misleading conclusions. A better thing to draw conclusions from would be the flagging behavior, but this is harder to observe and takes time to show up. Edit: There's another factor which is poorly understood, and which I think might have been at play in the comment you were reacting to above: HN is a highly international community. Norms on divisive issues vary greatly across countries. Many of us tend to assume that HN is composed of people mostly like ourselves (in terms of background), but that's far from true. After observing the data closely for many years, I'm convinced that many international differences come across as outrageous domestic behavior when we misinterpret who's speaking. Not that a statement would be more acceptable, necessarily, if we knew—but it would be less provocative, because people seem willing to adjust for this when encountering opposing views.
  - jolux 8y ago
    I appreciate that flagging occurs, and I do applaud that in recent years the space has started to seem markedly less toxic. I think for me it's partially that it's gotten so much better of late that the bad posts stick out more. I also have noted that the comments are often at odds with what gets voted to the front page, suggesting far more people vote for things than bother to comment.
- b0rsuk 8y ago
  The easiest fix would be not allowing people from outside US to post, or alternatively writing the current American social rules into the HN guidelines to avoid such unpleasant surprises. It is implicit that American social rules are to be followed, but it doesn't state it anywhere in the guidelines. From the outside, some US social rules and political correctness are very transparent and laughable: * in movies, there must be a black man in position of power, and you need to iterate over human "races" and put one of each into the cast. I find the term "Afro-American" misleading because for example a person from Haiti is neither but does have a very dark skin. * double moral standards homicide is lauded when performed by colored people on whites. No one dares to say Django Unchained is a so-so movie. The movie was a huge success in US, but is largely forgotten everywhere else. * it is not OK to laugh at certain groups of people, like disabled or religious types. Contrast this with Monty Python's approach, who made the point to laugh at everyone, including atheists. That's what I call healthy. If a society has a group of extremely sensitive people who can't take criticism, I call it out of balance. It means people have other sorts of problems, because mentally stable people can take a joke at their expense. * Domestic abuse against women is abhorrent, but against men there's a movie genre called "screwball comedy". Kick a man in his balls and it's FUNNY! Expose a man sitting on a toilet and it's FUNNY! I'm talking about movies. * It's okay to depict flying pieces of brain, blood and intestines but a nipple gets a movie banned. Anything sexual is the work of Satan. * Gun control laws. It's like Americans worship a god of Death. Anyone is free to go on a killing spree I guess? Personally I think it's more rude than implying there are some differences between men and women. YMMV.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]